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Earlier this week we looked at the EPYC 7251 Linux performance as AMD's lowest-cost server CPU from this latest generation of Zen-based processors. That eight core / sixteen thread CPU packed a nice amount of performance considering its hitting the $500 price point, but if you are looking for a single socket system and have $750 USD to lay out on a CPU, the AMD EPYC 7351P packs in even more value.

At $750, the EPYC 7351P offers quite a bit and is double the core/thread count of the lower-cost EPYC 7251 for just $250~300 more. Additionally, the EPYC 7351P's base clock frequency of 2.4GHz is the highest of the current EPYC 7000 series and matches that of the 7351 (non-P model that retails for over $1100) where as the highest-end EPYC 7601 has a 2.2GHz base frequency. But the higher-end models do offer a higher boost frequency of 3.0~3.2GHz where as this 7351P tops out at 2.9GHz.

The "P" postfix of this processor does denote though that it's limited to "1P" systems rather than "2P". The 1P socket configuration means this processor can only be used in single-socket systems unlike the non-P models where you can run two of them on the same system for doubling up the horsepower. The "P" processor models are cheaper if you are after a single CPU configuration but can't then pair two of them together or hope to add a second identical CPU down the road.

The EPYC 7351P has been working out well in all of our Linux testing thus far. As noted previously, any modern Linux distribution (including the enterprise distributions) should work well for EPYC (and Ryzen/Threadripper for that matter too) if its using a recent kernel and ideally an up-to-date version of GCC/LLVM compiler for being able to benefit from the "znver1" optimizations. The main kernel caveats to point out is if wanting to make use of Secure Memory Encryption with EPYC you will need to be on the Linux 4.14 kernel that will be released as stable soon. If temperature monitoring of the CPU is important, that support for Zen CPUs is coming to the "k10temp" driver in Linux 4.15.

Our EPYC testing has been done from the Tyan Transport SX TN70A-B8026 barebones server setup. This Tyan single-socket platform has been working out extremely well for our EPYC testing thus far and paired with EPYC's many PCI-E lanes offers support for 24 x 2.5-inch PCI-E NVMe SSD drives. Thanks to Tyan for providing this reference platform for our testing and AMD for submitting these processor review samples.

The CPUs and Tyan Transport SX TN70A-B8026 is paired with 8 x 16GB DDR4-2666 memory for making full use of the memory capabilities of EPYC. For storage these current tests are being done from a Samsung 850 PRO SSD.

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